Written by

the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

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Each spring, hundreds of volunteers have an opportunity to guard sturgeon at their spawning sites on the Wolf River and protect the fish from poaching. When the sturgeon are spawning along the rocky shorline of the Wolf River, they are fairly oblivious to nearby human activity and are very susceptible to illegal harvest.

The volunteers of the “Sturgeon Patrol” guard the spawning fish 24 hours a day throughout the spawning season, which is typically in late April and early May.

While it is impossible to predict the exact dates that spawning will occur year, guards are routinely scheduled from April 15th through May 5th. Spawning generally occurs over a seven to 10 day period within that time window. While we do our best to get all scheduled guards out on the riverbank to see fish, invariably we must cancel some scheduled shifts if the fish are simply not active. We try in those cases to re-schedule guards into an active period.